Where Madness Lies
by etraytin
Summary: Mid-Episode fix for College Kids. What would happen if Josh didn't go find Amy on the dance floor?


Author's Note: Hi everybody! Here's a little standalone canon-divergence fic for your Tuesday perusal. It's not a big divergence, nor a long one, but I found it quite satisfying. This one is based off a prompt from Yorkiemusketeer, who asked for a fix-it for College Kids where Josh does not desert Donna and they keep talking. Hope you enjoy!

…...

Campaign days were always long, but this was shaping up to be one of the longest on record. A before-dawn trip on Air Force One, four hours of campaigning in Indiana, twenty subsequent hours attempting to escape Indiana on planes, trains and automobiles, a terrorist attack on students at a swim meet, a late-night stroll through the Capitol, an hour's nap, an epiphany on college tuition, and Judge Wingding's Secret Plan To Screw Everything Up Forever. Now Josh was in... Massachusetts, somewhere, he was fairly sure. He really ought to know, he'd spent quite a bit of time in the state over the years, but right now he just didn't care. There'd been a useless meeting with some gladhanding in a state they couldn't possibly lose, and now he was at an unbearable Rock the Vote event with some chick wailing on the stage and Donna sitting next to him at the bar. The Donna part was the only thing that wasn't unbearable.

Donna had been there the whole time, all through the day that wouldn't end. She'd navigated them through the state like a border collie, a border collie with an incomplete understanding of time zones, but still remarkably efficient in adverse conditions. She'd gotten them to the train, both times, gotten them into the hotel, gotten him and Toby focused on the human implications of all they'd seen and done that day. When they'd sat in the hotel room and watched the President deliver that speech, her hand had been warm on his back, rubbing lightly while Josh tried to digest the story of young men who ran into fire. They'd walked together through the rain-shiny streets of DC until it had occurred to them that the size of the Capitol building might have made it appear closer than it actually was, and the White House was still kind of far away from that, too. Now she was talking about football, digesting and regurgitating all the facts she'd acquired on Title IX this afternoon.

It was kind of fun to watch her, he decided, staring at her with a kind of bleary intensity that was all he could manage at the moment. Donna was as exhausted as he, and half-drunk besides, but as usual, the research she'd done had fired up her passion and she was determined to make him understand whatever esoteric conclusion she'd come to. That was pretty much the way they always did things, and he just didn't concentrate too hard on the fact that four out of five times, she could talk him around to her view on a subject. Eighty-five really did seem to be a lot of football scholarships, especially for a team that, quite frankly, sucked most of the time.

He caught sight of a familiar face in the crowd and rose, stopping Donna in mid-paragraph. Amy had been consulting for Stackhouse; if Josh could just get a temperature read from her on what the old coot was thinking in terms of the debate, maybe he could come up with a better plan than trying to get Wegland disbarred for obvious insanity. "Excuse me," he murmured, brushing past Donna. She didn't say anything, but in the corner of his eye he could see her follow his gaze, see her shoulders slump a little. She was tired, he thought, but even he knew that wasn't it. There were some things they just couldn't talk about, stuff that was entirely off limits no matter how tired or drunk or happy or sad they were, and right up there at the top of the list was why it bothered each of them to see the other dating. He could harass her about the parade of gomers, she could make sly remarks and pointed facial expressions about Amy, but they both pretended fiercely that it was because the other had terrible taste in romantic partners and nothing more than that.

Amy was looking particularly fetching tonight, having done some mysterious female thing to her Rock the Vote shirt that made it considerably shorter and tighter than the ones most of the women present were wearing. Josh reminded himself that he didn't actually like Amy very much, no matter how fetching she looked, and that they really didn't get along very well, which was why they'd broken up in the first place. But she was looking good and might have the political scoop he needed, a potent combination.

He turned back for a moment and was surprised to meet Donna's eyes, watching him go, She colored and turned back to her beer, finishing it off in a long swallow he couldn't help but admire. Even in a plain t-shirt and blue jeans, she was much more beautiful than she had any right to be, certainly more beautiful than he had any right to think about. It would honestly be a lot smarter for him to turn away right now and go find Amy. Tired people made mistakes, and he couldn't afford any mistakes on this, not in the middle of an already-tight reelection campaign. He'd go and find Amy, maybe they'd talk a little bit, maybe he'd forgive her conditionally for boiling his cell phone and driving him generally insane. That would be stupid, but still smarter than staying.

Josh slumped back down onto a bar stool, this time on the other side of Donna. She turned to look at him, her eyes widening a little with surprise. "I need another beer," he told her lamely.

Ordinarily, she'd have twitted him about not needing any more beer, especially as tired as he was. Instead, she raised two fingers to the bartender, who brought over two more bottles. "We'll probably regret this later," she told him, passing him his bottle.

"Undoubtedly." He clinked the neck of his bottle against hers. They were silent for a minute, her facing the bar, him facing away, their faces pointed towards each other whenever one glanced in the other's direction. Amy was gone again, disappeared back into the crowd. "I keep thinking about those swimmers," he finally said.

"Josh," she began, compassion in her voice as she lay a hand on his arm.

He shook his head. "No, I mean... do you think they thought about what they were giving up before they ran? Was it just some heroic instinct, or did they have a moment where all the numbers had to line up and they decided that they couldn't live with themselves if they didn't try?"

"I don't know," Donna admitted softly. "Maybe it was some of both. Maybe they already knew it about themselves, that they were the kind of people who needed to help. Maybe this just proved it." She ran her fingers lightly over the sleeve of his shirt, making a little circle patterns on his forearm. "And they were heroes, absolutely, but that doesn't take away from the relief of the families whose kids escaped."

"Yeah." Josh took a drink and wished it were something stronger, for all he'd never get drunk on purpose at a campaign event. "But it makes you wonder, if you came to a moment in your life, a crisis point, what would you do?"

"You'd do the best you could," Donna told him with quiet confidence. "And maybe it would be running into the fire, maybe it would be running away to fight another day. But you, and me, and all of us, we wouldn't do less than our best." She smiled a little. "Even if sometimes that means plunging headlong into rewriting the federal budget for tuition incentive after no sleep at all."

That drew a short chuckle out of him. "CJ already called me Don Quixote once today," he pointed out.

"If the windmill fits," she quipped back.

"You're gonna get me in trouble with the alternative energy guys." He leaned back against the bar for another minute, listening to the music. "You tired?" he asked all at once.

"Nah," she lied brazenly, waving a hand. "I've transcended mere human weariness. But if you tell me we're pulling another all-nighter on Title IX, I'm going to stuff you in a locker."

"You wanna go get something to eat?" he asked. "That was some truly horrifying chicken at the grip-and-grin."

"Mine escaped before I could eat it," Donna agreed. "I am kind of hungry. You're not worried they'll leave without us again?"

"Not this time," Josh boasted, rising from his stool and offering her his arm. "We're back in the urban jungle now, Donna. This is my home territory, and I am a master navigator."

"Well, that's terrifying." She laughed, but she took his elbow and walked with him toward the door.

…...

"When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!"

― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote


End file.
